Darwaish

Last week, while surfing though flickr, I came across a wonderful collection of mostly black & white photos by Dr. Ghulam Nabi Kazi. His collection has a major section Plain Mr. Jinnah dedicated to Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s rare photographs and some of his personal letters that not many people have ever read. Dr. Kazi [...]

Adil Najam
I was, indeed, surprised by the comments on our last ATP Quiz. Maybe I am too much of an academic and think that everyone has also read the things I have. Or, maybe, my text was misleading because I had suggested that the quiz was too easy. Anyway, it was not until comment no. [...]

Adil Najam
This one should be easy. Too easy maybe. But, then, the purpose of these posts is not really to test your knowledge. It is - like everything on this blog - to initiate conversations. To kindle thought. And maybe remind ourselves of things we should never have forgotten in the first place.
Anyhow, don’t read [...]

Owais Mughal
Just like rest of the world, Harry Potter’s seventh book, titled as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows got launched in Pakistan today amid fanfare. Considering the diminishing trend of reading printed books worldwide, it is a positive sign to see the type of demand this book has created among Pakistani muggles.

Big bookstores [...]

Adnan Ahmad
I finished reading Mohsin Hamids second novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist over the weekend.
His first novel Moth Smoke captured my imagination quite vividly with several fascinating monologues in the novel and a theme that had everything to do with my generation and that age of mine. The author in between these two novels has [...]

Raza Rumi
The current controversy on Rushdie’s knighthood has several dimensions. Amid the knee-jerk reactions alluding to the grand-conspiracy-against-Islam, it brings out various layers and levels of literature’s role and position in societies and now in the globalized world.
I was once a fan of Rushdie and avidly devoured his books with great admiration. From Grimus to [...]

Raza Rumi
The passions of Khalid Hasan, a noted journalist and writer, are well known. The life and persona of Madame Noor Jehan have been celebrated in his writings for years. He has translated several leading lights of Urdu literature including Manto, Abbas, and Faiz. However, it is Faiz who has been a prominent subject of [...]